Expenses

Expenses are a familiar part of day-to-day practices and are important to track. At StaffSavvy, we want to make finding a way to create and track these expenses as simple as possible.

This guide will walk you through how to set up expenses in the system and get started using them.

Step 1

Enabling Expenses

The first step is to enable expenses within the system. To do this, go to Global System > Configuration  > Global Settings. Click on the features tab and scroll down to ‘Expenses & Mileage Claims’. Click to enable this setting, and then save your preference at the bottom of the page.

Step 2

Creating a Pay Element

Within StaffSavvy, Pay Elements form the cornerstone of the expense claim process. Each type of claim you wish to accept will be a pay element within the system. You can have multiple pay elements for different types of claims or cost centres you wish to report upon. First, go to Pay > Pay Settings > Pay Elements and create a new pay element.

Create a title, this should link to the type of expense claim it is, i.e. entertainment expense. Then, fill in the rest of the details section, including whether you want the expense claim to be included in wage sheets. 

Type of claim

When creating a new pay element, you will be asked to choose the type of pay. In this drop-down, you’ll see both Expense Claim and Mileage Claim. Expense claims can be any value, whereas mileage claims are any distance multiplied by your amount per mile and are used for travel claims. For example, you could specify that staff are able to claim back £1 for every mile.

Once you have selected either Expense claim or Mileage claim, select your payroll option and then save.

Step 3

Enabling Permissions

Once you have created your expense pay element it is important to establish who will have the permission to approve claims.

The permissions system allows you to specify who can approve a certain expense or mileage claims. This allows you to configure skills, squads and individuals who can approve that type of entry, as well as who should receive notifications about it. This allows you to further refine who can approve each item (they must still have permission to approve the time entries).

To use these permissions go to your list of pay elements (Pay > Pay Settings > Pay Elements). Next to any of the expenses or mileage pay element types will be an Edit Approval Permissions button.

This will load a new Pay Elements Permissions page. At the top, you can add contacts, groups and squads to the list of people who can approve these time entries. In addition to granting specific permissions, you can also state if they should be notified about new items for approval. This will be via email and dashboard notifications. So some teams can have approval permission but w

Step 4

Linking Expenses to Skills

Once you have your pay elements configured, you can then link them through to skills. This is how you confirm who can make which types of claim.

A staff member can only make a claim if the pay element is assigned to a skill they are in. This prevents any staff member making any claim they wish in the system.

Under Staff > Staff Settings > Staff Skills. Edit a skill you wish to assign the expense pay element to.

Click on the Pay tab at the top of the page. Under the general pay details for that skill, you’ll also find an Expense Claims section.

Simply choose which of the pay elements you wish to allow the skill to claim against and click Save.

That’s all there is to it - this will now add the My Expenses link to the menu for those staff in the skill and they can start to put claims into the system.

Step 4

Making a claim

Once everything is set up in the system, staff can make a claim directly from their account. They simply use the My Account > My Expenses page.

This will show them all of their pending claims as well as allow them to make a new claim.

Expense Claim

If an expense pay element is assigned to one of their skills then the staff member will see an Add New Expense button on their My Expenses page.

This will display a form to complete:

They must provide the required information including an image/PDF of their receipt or proof of purchase. The skill and venue allow the expenses to be reported by this information too.

Mileage Claim

If a mileage expense pay element is assigned to one of their skills then the staff member will see an Add New Mileage Claim button on their My Expenses page.

This will display a form to complete:

They must provide the required information including the start & finish locations and to confirm if it was a round trip or just a single direction.

They will also be asked to enter their total miles which allows them to include diversions etc.

We’ll also ask for a receipt or proof of payment but this is not currently a required element.

Step 6

Approving Claims

All claims will be displayed within the Unprocessed Pay report under Pay. This shows all time entries, pay items and expense claims in a single report to be reviewed.

The icons on the left show the type of claim being made and the Length/Number column shows the value or miles claimed.

Clicking on the edit icon will display further details:

Claims can be adjusted, approved and deleted.

Staff will be notified when a claim is deleted; a record will be stored in the system of the claim and removed claims can be seen using the “show deleted items” filter on the unprocessed report.

Step 7

Exporting & Reporting

As the claims are processed through as a pay element, they’ll automatically go through to your wage sheets and payroll exports.

No additional work should be needed to ensure this works as expected. Simply use the same wage sheet creation and export process as normal.

If your payroll system is a direct connection, we’ll automatically pass the approved details over as the wage sheet is processed.